Topic areas

Talks at this conference

Details

The 10th edition of the CeSpeC’s Summer School focuses on a theme inclusive of all the previous editions, which is the role of Humanities in interpreting and understanding in a critical and reflexive way what happens in the contemporary world. CeSpeC’s Research Group is absolutely convinced that Humanities have useful resources, strategies and methods to offer a perspective on the present that is deeper than what popular, political and academic opinion seem to often affirm nowadays. To highlight Humanities’ pedagogical role in building a solid public space where citizens may properly grow, the Summer School 2017 will focus on the following current themes, showing the advantages coming from the humanistic studies in their interpretation and understanding.

i) “Life” panel has the objective to show how Humanities could provide precious tools and instruments to increase individuals' consciousness about many facets of their lives, starting from those considered as the most tragic, like death, which is the limit defining the deepest sense of life itself, and our way to be in the world (cfr. Death Education);

ii) “Gender” panel will give word to philosophers, sociologists and anthropologists specialized in gender studies who will highlight the main issues on individual and collective rights, regarding, on one hand, gender differences, and, on the other hand, the role of the woman in the contemporary world. The experts will underline which are the main preconceptions and biases present in our societies regarding the concept of “gender” and, relatively to the female role, why those prejudgments rose, and how they can be overcome. This last aspect will be examined with particular attention to special educational systems, in order to tackle also contemporary problems such as homophobia and the so-called femicide;

iii) “Communication” panel aims to analyse how the communication changed along with the development of the digital culture and how Humanities may offer necessary instruments to face individual and collective challenges that originated from the transition from the analogic to the digital world. More specifically, the lecturers will focus on the psychological, social and intersubjective effects of the alteration in the meaning of the image, caused by the excessive and "eternal" presence of digital objects;

iv) “Violence” session aims to analyse the incidence of humanistic reflections in order to understand religious violence’s socio-political transformations in the public sphere, after the radicalisation of the conflict between different cultures and religions in the Western world;

v) “Education and citizenship” panel is strictly connected to the previous three, and has the purpose of examining in depth all the narrative and communitarian methodologies, which are being developed by philosophical and pedagogical disciplines, through the application of philosophical knowledges in extra-academic educational sectors, such as prison education or associations working in close contact with local communities;

vi) “Nature and ecology” panel will give word to lecturers who, coming from the humanistic field, try to complement their competences with experts working in the fields of ecology, environmental studies, and for the safeguard of local natural landscapes. Such integration is crucial since Humanities, especially in philosophical, literary, and artistic sectors, offer pivotal conceptual instruments to understand the linkages between humans and ecosystems.

In addition to the panels just described, the Summer School will offer three public soirees with the goal of promoting and disseminating its themes. The first one is the official inauguration of the whole event and it will give word to an eminent lecturer who will be protagonist of a Lectio Magistralis focused on the specific theme of this edition. The second and the third ones will focus on literature; lecturers, writers and poets, will explain the importance of literature for our education, even through anecdots and personal experiences.